Monthly Archives: February 2012

So today marks the last of the “love” songs for What’s Playing Wednesday. It’s actually kind of hard for me to write this post because I have Portishead crooning in my ear, but I’ll try my best.

Next month I’ll be playing “fire” songs. I can’t wait. Really. I’m very excited. Can’t you tell? But that won’t happen until next week. For now, let’s focus on the last love song. I posted a year…maybe more ago about my past crushes. The lead singer of this band was in the list and if I’m completely honest, I still have a bit of a crush on him. He has charisma and a flair for fashion that baffles me even as it attracts me.

Scott Weiland started off with fuchsia hair and baggy clothes and turned into this really interesting man who wears what he wants. I love it. He kind of makes me think of David Bowie slash Jim Morrison. Anyway, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Stone Temple Pilots’ music since they came out and today’s song is “Interstate Love Song”.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this month of “love” songs and I also hope I’ll see you next week for “fire” *said like Beavis* For now, here’s “Interstate Love Song”:

What a dismal morning! I woke up only to see a dense fog all around. It makes driving so difficult, not to mention the humidity is hell on my hair.

But fog reminds me of my brother when he was young. He used to say the most hysterical things and we never fail to remind him of them. For instance, it wasn’t “fog”. For some reason, instead of saying it was foggy, he’d say “the froggies are coming!” Now, I’m not sure if he thought they were actual frogs, but it used to crack us up.

Of course, kids say the darnedest things. We all have stories about kids saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or completely misunderstanding some things. It’s natural since they’re learning. If you throw in a slight speech impediment, sometimes the things they say will leave you struggling to hold back your laughter.

For instance, my cousin’s daughter had a problem with her “st” sounds. Now, I know it’s wrong to laugh, but that “st” sound only opened the door to mass hysteria in our family. I have mentioned before how we have no problem laughing at each other, but in this case, our little one struck us all dumb.

Like the day she caught a plastic sword at a Mardi Gras parade. She must’ve been three or four at the time. She brandished her awesome weapon and declared, “I am the king and this is my *ick!” (insert a d in that asterisk and you’ve got exactly what she said). We stared at her in appalled horror for all of three or for seconds before we started choking on our laughter. OMG. Even now, remembering how proud she was of her “stick” To make matters worse, every time she had any object that was…phallic in shape, whether it was a sword, or a rolled up newspaper, it immediately became her “stick”. Hilarity ensued.

Then there was the time her friend came over to play. Our little one’s grandmother had given her this gaudy plastic serving spoon to play with. The friend looked in awe at the blue plastic with silver paint and said, “You must be rich!” Little one shook her head and said very plainly, “No, we’re poor like you.”

Oh man…My stomach hurts from holding back the laughter. Of course there are a ton of stories I could share, but it would take a few blog posts to get them all in. Maybe I should start a “Kids Say the Darnedest Things” thread and see where it goes. It’s funny how a foggy day made me think about this, but there you have it. That’s how my brain works.

So my question to you is, what have your kids, or relatives’ kids said that left you in hysterical horror? You can tell me. I won’t judge!

I love weekends when I get to do girly things. I don’t do them very often because most of those girly things cost way too much money for me to do all the time, but this weekend was an exception.

With the upcoming conferences, my hair needed an overhaul. My roots were showing, I could see the gray along my hairline, and the red had dulled to a less interesting color. Since I was also going to be wearing open-toe shoes, I knew I’d need to get a pedicure. It wasn’t hard to rope my older sister into coming with me.

We spent a couple of hours getting our hair done (I walked out with a bright blonde, vibrant red, and deep black color set) and headed next door to get our pedicures. Ah, bliss. I haven’t had my toes done in…well, long enough that I didn’t want anyone to see them. As one of my co-workers said once, “I needed to do something with those puppies!”

Then, the big sis and I headed over to one of our favorite Thai restaurants. It’s really funny to realize there’s more than one in our hometown. It used to be the only restaurants we had were a couple of Chinese joints, a lot of steak and seafood houses, and fast food. Now we have three Thai restaurants, four Japanese restaurants, more Chinese places than you can shake a stick at, and a Greek restaurant. It’s so weird! But we went to one of our favorite places and stuffed ourselves.

It wasn’t easy rolling myself out of bed this morning because I could’ve used another day off, but I’m not cranky today. I’m…feeling good and relaxed and ready for the conferences to start.

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. When I managed to pry open my eyes, I couldn’t even summon excitement that it’s Friday. I just wanted it to be Saturday already. *sniff* But to get to the wonderful weekend, we have to endure the horror of the work week, right?

*snort* Whatever. No, I’m not in a bad mood, just cranky from not getting enough sleep. The worst part of that is I went to bed at a decent time, I’ve just been sleeping hard all week.

But you’re not here to talk about my sleeping habits, right? You’re here for the goodies. Well, you’ll just have to wait until I’ve talked myself around to sharing him. You know how greedy I am. All week long I’ve been reminded of how I work around a lot of good ole boys. I have mentioned I work in the ship building industry, right? In my other life I wear steel toe boots, a hard hat, and safety glasses. I mingle with welders, ship fitters, operators, and everyone else who’s involved in building boats and barges. So yeah, it’s pretty much a given I work around a lot of men who fit that description.

And that’s where today’s Fantasy Man comes from. I found a cowboy. A very smexy cowboy who I wish worked with me. Like in my office…and uh, stuff. *cough*

I think he could persuade me to take some riding lessons…how about y’all?

Happy Friday! Fantasy on the Bayou is next weekend and I’m stoked! Can’t wait to see my fellow FF&Pers again and take that vampire tour of New Orleans I never managed to take in all the trips I’ve taken to NOLA.

I can’t think of any Cajun French lessons to pass on to you today. The only thing I can really come up with is Swamp People because I was talking with my nephew about it over the weekend.

I really enjoy the show although I do spend a good bit of time cringing. Some of the things said, or done, during the show are outright exaggerations, but that makes for good television. The one thing I get a kick out of, but that irritates me, are the subtitles.

Are they really so hard to understand? Most of the time I have to look away from the television so I can concentrate on what they’re saying, rather than read what they’re saying. Does that make sense? If I read the subtitles, I can’t really gauge their emotions. Then again, looking away from the television means I miss something.

Then we had to talk about who our favorites are. My nephew and I both agree that Mitch and Glen are downright hilarious, but if I had to pick an absolute favorite, it’d be Troy. Second to him would be Liz because what woman wouldn’t admire another who had the courage and know-how to go out catching alligators? I mean, that’s just awesome.

But then we went back to talking about the subtitles. It seems I’m not the only one from here who has a problem with them.

I’ll put the question to y’all. If you watch Swamp People, do you have to read the subtitles to understand any of the hunters when they’re speaking?

I was lazy yesterday. I guess that kind of just goes with the territory considering it was Fat Tuesday and all I did was write, read, and nap. It was lovely. I did think about posting something, but obviously my thoughts never came to fruition.

It’s time for another What’s Playing Wednesday. I spent a lot of time trying to remember songs with the word “love” in the title. I never realized how hard it was to actually pick my brain for themed songs. It seemed so easy when I started out. Next month I think I’m going with fire for the theme. I know lots of fire songs.

Okay, so anyway, back to love. This band is one that I really enjoy. I find the music to be very driving and upbeat and the vocalist is great. It’s kind of edgy and raw, but not in the way of heavy metal. It’s definitely dance type music, or at least I think it is. The band is called Spinnerette and today’s song is called “Ghetto Love”. The video isn’t terribly exciting unless you like looking at the singer the entire time, but I do love this song.

I’m so glad I’m off tomorrow. I might not be doing the parade thing, but I need another day off. The face is still sore from last week’s dentist appointment and the swelling is still there.

I actually felt great on Saturday. My face didn’t hurt much, I was able to talk and laugh without much pain. Maybe I did it too much. I had so many things planned for Saturday. I was going to run my errands in town, clean my house, and sit down to write. Only one of those things happened.

I got home from town, settled in to start doing laundry when I had a phone call from my dad. We don’t talk as much as I’d like and I’m partially to blame for that. We spent a few minutes chatting about his cruise, me and my sister’s injuries (my face, her leg), when he hit me with the reason he was calling. He found out last week that he has Mesothelioma, asbestos cancer. My heart stopped because, yeah, I’ve seen all the commercials about it and the class action lawsuits. I kept it together while talking to him because I could hear the emotion in his voice. He’s feeling fine physically, but it’s weighing on his mind.

As soon as I got off the phone with him, the tears started. I had to call my mom. I don’t know what she could have done for me, but it felt good to talk to her about it and cry a little. Then I had to call my sister who my dad had been trying to get in touch with. It’s weird, but all of that happened in less than an hour. I had a good cry, did a little research on the illness and brooded for a few more hours.

I decided that after this news I needed a little cheering up, I went to my brother’s house to see my nephew. There’s something about being around babies that makes all of my woes disappear. Maybe it’s because they’re starting out, they’re fresh and clean and so innocent, but Bennett brought a smile to my face despite his bronchial infection. Poor little mite has to have breathing treatments. The masks are bigger than his face, but they seem to help.

After I spent a couple of hours playing with him, I went back home just in time for my godson to stop by for a visit. God, I needed that. I told him about Dad, but we didn’t dwell on it. I hadn’t seen him since Christmas and just being around him again helped ease the rest of my worries.

Yes, I’m still brooding about Dad, but I’m…okay. He goes to a lung specialist next week and I’m sure the closer the date arrives, the more I’ll brood, but I can be strong for this, for him.

And on that depressing note, I’ll try to lose myself in my writing where illness is something easily fixed by shapeshifter genetics, or vampire blood, or something like that. I swear I’ll be more upbeat tomorrow.